By: John Hulsman

Dr. John C. Hulsman is Senior Columnist at City AM, and Founder and Managing Partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a global political risk consulting firm. More of John’s work is available on his substack

An assassination in Tehran — that’s all about Joe Biden

December 7, 2020

To outside weary eyes, the unending conflicts that go on in the Middle East amount to everyday background noise, a part of the paper to ignore amid the deluge of vaccine stories. But to disregard a recent assassination in Tehran would be a mistake. In a plot worthy of the best spy thriller, Dr Mohsen [...]
Antony Blinken and the tragedy of America’s foreign policy establishment

November 30, 2020

I was recently speaking to an DC-insider friend of mine about the appointment of Antony Blinken as America’s next secretary of state. My old colleague — a veteran of my seminal struggles with the neo-conservatives around the time of the Iraq War, a passionate Republican Never-Trumper and card-carrying member of the Washington establishment — summed [...]
Love him or hate him, Trump is right to wind down America’s endless wars

November 23, 2020

In my last book, To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk, each chapter represents a key precept, based on a specific historical story, as to how to do political risk analysis right. One of my favourite of these 10 commandments is what I term “the Losing Gambler’s Syndrome”. This directly relates to [...]
The biggest loser in the US election: The idea of the loyal opposition

November 16, 2020

Edward R. Murrow, the greatest of all American newsmen, got it exactly right about the essence of the miracle of American political stability: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” Before our very eyes, the aftermath of the election of 2020 [...]
In tearing up America’s democratic norms, Donald Trump leaves behind a poisonous legacy

November 15, 2020

As I write this, with the states of Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina circling around him, the first term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States is about to come to a shattering end. Notice that I said first term. For there is little doubt that the Republican Party remains [...]
The curse of the Mail-In Vote: How this contested US election became a horror show

November 4, 2020

For a number of months now, good political risk man that I am, I have worried aloud in these pages with increasing dread about the 2020 US presidential election. There are times when you hate being right about making correct political risk calls. The Iraq War debacle was surely such an occasion for me. Sadly, [...]
Biden and his interventionists should beware: America has changed due to the Iraq effect

November 2, 2020

It is not too much to say that my early and fervent opposition to the Iraq War was the seminal professional and ethical moment of my life. I will never forget it. As it turns out, neither will the American people. Despite what it cost me, I was against the war for myriad reasons. It [...]
Why I’m calling the US election for Biden and the Democrats

October 27, 2020

Given the absolute lunacy of this past year, the American presidential campaign of 2020 has followed a strikingly consistent pattern. Since the coming of the virus in the spring, Democratic challenger Joe Biden has held a clear (if not quite overwhelming) lead over the incumbent Donald Trump. Last Thursday’s Real Clear Politics aggregator of polls [...]
The world’s great power rivals must not underestimate American blundering

October 26, 2020

I love the peerless movie Casablanca beyond all others for its wit, intelligence, charm. I love it for its beating heart of romanticism, all lying just under the strata of the most delightful cynicism imaginable. But most of all I love it for its politics. A perfect geopolitical allegory of the early 1940s, it finds [...]
Almost unnoticed, Europe hurtles into decline

October 12, 2020

The string is almost played out. Despite a generation of frantically trying to change the subject — be it by focusing on their own arcane (and very boring) institutional struggles, the problems of other countries (usually the US), or fatuously announcing that every obvious setback is merely a chance to move “the project” of European [...]

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